The moral effect of this ingenious scheme has been extraordinary. Not only have weak hospitals been brought into line, but the better-managed institutions have been improved, while as regards individuals the effect has been to encourage every competent hospital official and to minimise as far as possible the harm done by the incompetent. At first it was thought that the investigations of the visiting committee, which are necessarily extremely thorough, might be resented as inquisitorial and un-English, but the visiting committee found that the authorities of almost every institution were eager to afford all possible information. The income of the fund and the amount annually distributed show a steady increase, which has been greatly fostered by the Order of the League of Mercy instituted by the King in 1899. This decoration is bestowed only as a reward for special personal service in the cause of the hospitals. The hospital stamp, too, which brought in so much money to the fund, was, if not actually designed, at any rate suggested by His Majesty, the central figure being Sir Joshua Reynolds’s “Charity,” which is to be seen in the famous Reynolds window at New College, Oxford. Perhaps the most often quoted observation ever uttered by the King is his famous saying about preventible diseases--“If preventible, why not prevented?” His Majesty is an eager supporter of every properly authorised medical discovery which promises to be of value to humanity in the alleviation of disease. For example, both the King and Queen Alexandra have taken the greatest interest in the “light treatment” for lupus introduced by Dr. Finsen, a Danish _savant_, which Her Majesty had installed at the London Hospital, and as we have seen His Majesty experienced in his own person the value of the Röntgen rays for purposes of diagnosis. The King has long been deeply impressed with the ravages of consumption and other forms of tuberculosis, and when, comparatively recently, an association for the prevention of this terrible scourge was established, he not only became its president, but took an active part in its deliberations. Moreover, not long before the death of Queen Victoria he consented to preside at a great National Congress on Tuberculosis to be held in London in the course of 1901, and to be attended by delegates from all parts of the British Empire.